Intel: Ultrabooks Continue Gaining Momentum

Ultrabooks are sleek and fast, and they're getting faster all the time. Meanwhile, an increasing number of vendors are building and marketing them. The evolution of ultrabooks was on the agenda at Monday's lineup of XChange presentations, and a sizable crowd gathered to hear an Intel representative discuss what developments we can expect next.

"It's sometimes hard to believe that ultrabooks were first announced only about a year ago at Comdex," said David Bradshaw, a marketing manager at Intel, which spearheads the specifications around what can be defined as an ultrabook. "They started hitting the shelves in October of last year, and we're already starting to see a third generation of these devices becoming available to both businesses and consumers."

According to Bradshaw, the latest versions are more than 20 percent faster than their predecessors, and they are delivered in a form factor that is even more slender than they were before. Battery life typically ranges from five to eight hours. And, if the device cannot reawaken itself from sleep mode in seven seconds or less, the manufacturers are not even allowed to label the device as an ultrabook.

"There are more than 110 designs on the market today, coming from a wide range of vendors including Toshiba, HP, Lenovo, Dell and Asus, just to name a few."

Bradshaw expects the popularity of these product lines to increase even further after October's projected launch of Windows 8. Intel anticipates that the combination of Windows 8 with the ultrabook specifications will provide great synergy, yielding crisper visuals, increased responsiveness and tighter integration with applications.

The appreciative crowd was clearly excited as Bradshaw held a drawing for no less than three ultrabooks that were given to audience members at the event.